Sony silently pushes 'Destiny: The Taken King' into PS4, leaves players confused

Unsuspecting PS4 owners were surprised to find “Destiny: The Taken King” in their libraries alongside other titles on the dashboard yesterday. Some thought this to be a compromise to their accounts while others mistook it for a bug. Others still were alarmed by the possibility that Sony had just allowed the PS4 to download a game without the user’s consent.

What happened was that the PS4 made use of its unique personalised content feature, which pushed the game secretly onto the console. This was done via automatic download settings that are a default to the console. Simply put, “Destiny: The Taken King” in the dashboard is a form of advertisement that takes advantage of one of the PS4’s features, Wired reported.

As of version 1.75 of the PS4 system firmware, released in 2014, the console by default adds download links for content on the home screen. According to Polygon, unless owners opt out of this feature, featured content will keep popping up.

When players click on the icon of the game in their library, it will take them to the PlayStation Store and present them an option of either purchasing the game or downloading the demo. Interestingly, GameSpot noted that Sony directs the user to the most expensive variant of the game.

According to the official PlayStation website, this was the result of the PS4 system’s ability to know the user’s preferences and interests. In time, it will learn a user’s likes and dislikes to help them discover new games and content that are based on favourite genres or developers.

While this is currently the default setting for most PS4 users, there is a way of preventing this from happening in the future. To disable the automatic download feature, users need to go to Settings from the PlayStation 4 home screen and then scroll down to System. From the system settings, owners need to select Automatic Downloads then unchecked Featured Content, which is turned on by default.